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Talk:Watch Out Now/@comment-4003625-20150413014642/@comment-3575890-20150413035033
I'm afraid I am going to have to respectfully disagree about the lazy animation, Ash. Frozen's animation is nothing short of befitting a masterpiece. It is vibrantly captivating and intricately detailed. The scenery is inspired by a stunning combination of ancient Norway and a fantastical world of magic, and it is clear that the animators did not skimp out while capturing that. Certainly none of it was recycled from any previous works. I also must disagree with your notion that Elsa and Anna are carbon copies of Rapunzel. While all three do fit a stylistic art design, they are hardly a recolouring of one prototype. Beginning with Rapunzel, the so called precursor that started it all, I would argue that her character design was groundbreaking. In comparison to the other Disney princesses before her, her aesthetic had to be one of the most diverse and unique they'd ever come out with. The others were all full figured and looked very mature beyond their years despite the majority of them actually being younger than Rapunzel. Rapunzel though was unlike any Disney princess before her. What really makes her stand out even to this day is that not only was she believable as an 18-year old girl, but an 18-year old girl of THIS world. Our world. She doesn't actually look like she was plucked straight out of a fairytale inspite of being a fairytale character. She's pretty like all the others, but she's REALISTICALLY so. She has freckles, she's short, she has a thin frame with the physique of a still-developing teenage girl rather than the measurements of an hourglass-shaped 20-something year old bombshell, and at the end of the film, her most glamorous feature, her long blonde hair, is all chopped off into a short shag. The end result is this tiny, underdeveloped, freckled, short haired brunette for a Disney princess. Words can't even begin to describe how innovative that is for a Disney princess character design. She was the first ever Disney princess to not be superhumanly beautiful. She was the first Disney princess that little girls could hold up as a realistic model for beauty standards. And she set the standard for more diversity in Disney princesses. Shortly after, we got Merida, another unique character design, if not the most diverse looking of all of them right down to her facial structure, body type, wardrobe, and her signature feature - her untamed, wild red hair that especially set her apart from her glamorous predessor's before her. Then we got Elsa and Anna, whom resemble Rapunzel more than any other, and the controversy began. People were affronted by how similar Anna's first draft character design was to Rapunzel's and before the movie could even be released, people were up in arms. Of course, at the time, people were also pissed off that Elsa wasn't a POC character because somehow the idea of a white ice queen is unfathomable, but that's neither here nor there. Point is, people were already set in hating everything about the film well in advance of it's release, until of course it was released and gained a huge following in it's success. Upon it's release though it was abundantly clear that many modifications had been made to Anna's appearance since the internet riots first erupted over her initial character design and a lot of the controversy calmed down, but some other people still feel that Anna and Elsa are carbon copies of Rapunzel. It's fine if they think that. Those who merely see a Rapunzel recolouring won't ever be able to see what I do as it all comes down to the eye of the beholder, but I personally have never thought this. In my eyes, Elsa and Anna are full on exotic, while Rapunzel to me has almost that all-American girl next door look to her despite being European herself. As I've already said, she looks like she could belong in OUR world. She looks like she could be my next door neighbour (if she wasn't of course a CGI animation, lol). Anna and Elsa do not have this quality about them. They have very distinctive Norwegian features that set them apart from not just Rapunzel, but all the rest. Their eyes are narrower and almond shaped, their noses are upturned, their jaw lines wider, their cheekbones significantly more prominent, and their body types are different too. Rapunzel has a more child-like frame versus Elsa and Anna's womanly figures - especially Elsa, who's also got some curves on her. Now when you pit Elsa and Anna against each other, they definitely look more similar to each other than they do to Rapunzel, but they're also supposed to. They're sisters, and the animators were very deliberate in illustrating that. But even then I would argue that there are distinctive features that set them apart. For example, Elsa's features are much sharper and more mature in contrast with Anna's more child-like softer features. So in summation, while there are undeniably some physical similarities between all three, they do not outweigh the dissimilarities and there is enough contrast between all three of them that each one can stand alone as an original design - especially Rapunzel, whom I still view as one of the most diversely and realistically designed Disney princesses we've ever had.